Diego Salinas, a senior at a high school in San Antonio, Texas, continues to fight for his First Amendment rights after his school unfairly shut down his pro-life club in October. He recently spoke with CatholicVote about where the issue stands.
CatholicVote reported in October that the Sonia Sotomayor High School administration suspended Salinas’ club, a chapter of Students for Life of America, after the organization began gaining traction and garnering backlash in the school community.
In a recent interview with CatholicVote, Salinas further explained how his free speech rights were violated and highlighted the importance of fighting for the club’s reinstatement. Salinas told CatholicVote that the club was only able to meet once before being suspended. Prior to that meeting, the club was getting attention on Instagram and being mentioned in conversations among the student body.
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“It really was the talk of the school. Debates were going in government class, and there was a lot of loud noise about it,” Salinas said. “What I didn’t know is that apparently the principal had been receiving a lot of emails from parents over the weekend, asking ‘Why is this a thing?’, ‘Why is this club here?’, ‘It’s political.’”
Salinas said that the school also objected over his use of the school’s name in the Instagram account handle, “@sotomayor_for_life” and forced him to delete the entire account. However, several other student clubs that used similar social media handles with the school’s name were not told to change their names or delete their accounts.
Salinas said that two days after being forced to delete the account, he was called into the principal’s office. The vice principal told him that the principal, Ada Bohlken, didn’t want to talk to him directly, but let him know that Bohlken had made the executive decision to suspend his club until further notice. Salinas added that her reasoning was “it [was] creating a distraction in the learning environment.”
“Later on she would also try to claim that it was a safety hazard because I was getting personal messages; however, I had never received any threats and they [the school] had never received any threats on my behalf as well,” Salinas said. “If they did, they would have had to involve the police.”
Salinas added that as he was being told about the club’s suspension, he asked if he could call his father, Brian Salinas, and was told “no.”
“[The vice principal] told me, ‘No, he doesn’t have to be on the phone because he’s not a part of the club, so I don’t have to talk with him,’” Salinas said.
Salinas said that he met with attorneys from Students for Life of America shortly after the club was suspended. On October 21, SFLA’s general counsel sent a demand letter to the school, claiming unconstitutional discrimination against the club and requesting its reinstatement.
“While the High School claims that this suspension may be due to potential backlash, it has failed to provide examples of such a disturbance that would merit a suspension. Furthermore, it is a Constitutional violation to silence the speaker when his dissenters are causing problems,” the demand letter reads. “Moreover, Sotomayor subjected Diego and WFL [Wildcats for Life] to additional unwarranted censorship, and imposed on them rules that do not apply to other clubs and have no support in school policies or the law.”
The school was given until October 28 to respond. Salinas said that the school ignored the letter, and the demand is “currently sitting with the school board.” He told CatholicVote that he suspects the issue is getting closer to litigation.
Had his club been allowed to continue, Salinas said he and his fellow students would have focused on pro-life apologetics and donations drives for women’s health centers in the area.
“The goal of the club [was] to encourage conversation and encourage positivity instead of negativity when people have conversations [about abortion] because it is obviously a very controversial topic and very sensitive,” Salinas said.
He added that he first became involved with pro-life work at the beginning of high school when he went to the March for Life.
“It was amazing to see over 70,000 people all together … But the real kicker for me was walking down the roads and seeing the screens that were showing what abortion really looks like,” he said. “And I want to be a medical student, I’ve done internships, I’ve seen blood and things like that, but it was the first time I ever really wanted to cry at an image.
“It was just a horrible, terrible thing to see and it really opened my eyes for how much this is an important issue. And when they say that it really is a defining issue of our time, they [aren’t] kidding. It really is.”
Salinas said that after graduating, he plans to continue his advocacy for protecting unborn life.
“I definitely intend to continue advocating,” he said. “One thing that I’ve always been … blessed to have is the ability to speak, and so I want to continue [that] as I get into college and grow up. I want to be able to use that platform a lot more and be a political speaker, and maybe even create my own podcast or YouTube channel to kind of speak on those things.”
Salinas also highlighted the importance of challenging the school’s decision to shut down his club, saying that it’s bigger than just a small group of students.
“I think it’s important that people realize that right now it is a pro-life group but … regardless of what you believe, this is an issue that now kind of faces everybody because it is a free speech issue,” he said.
Salinas later added, “I think the more we can have the ability to speak on these things [abortion] rather than fight about it is what will really lead our country to unity and as a whole, be able to solve these issues a lot sooner.”
LifeNews Note: Hannah Hiester writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.